God of A Monster
by TennisWriter456
Summary: The blood that's on my hands is such a strange color. It's a muddied red. I saved his life. I helped him live. He would be dead. His soul would have gone up to heaven—perhaps down to hell, I haven't decided—if it weren't for these hands. I was a god for him


**I was listening to the soundtrack of this anime (my all-time favorite anime) and I got very sad and my feels became too much so I sat down at my computer, sobbing, to write this one-shot because Tenma is such a tragic hero and Johan is such a tragic villain. **

**Enjoy, love forever and always. **

* * *

God of A Monster

I sit and I think alone. I try to eat, and I try to drink, but it won't go down. It sticks. Even the air when I try to breathe. So I brood. I brood about everything and nothing at the same time. Everything is nothing, after all. That's what I've come to tell myself so that I stop trying to figure out the difference. Trying to figure out the difference is hard. It's just all the same. What more can I do but brood? Ask myself,

What could've happened

What would've happened

What should've happened

Those questions take up most of time, most of my thoughts. I don't have the energy for much else, and they're the only questions my brain can even manage. Never,

What can happen

What will happen

What should happen

I can't see any vision of the future anymore. Not even a blurry one. The promise of a future for me has sunk into the shadows of the horrors of my past. I find it ironic—being a master of the brain, everyone else's brain, and yet mine has come to the brink of pure insanity. I've seen it before. I've fixed it before. But here I am, brooding and asking and drowning in the past, wondering what it even means to have a brain of my own.

I'm not sure what I want to be called. I don't know what my title has become. I was once called a giver of life. A healer. I made people smile. I actually held their happiness, their future, in my hands. My palms were clean then. There are still people who want to call me a giver of life. A healer. But when I look at my hands and try to give them their happiness, my palms are too red. There's too much blood to even see what I'm holding. Still they thank me. They kiss these bloody fingers, bow at these muddy feet.

Remorse regret remorse regret

Emotions I was once too confident to feel. I knew myself too well, I believed in myself too much, to even know what remorse meant. What regret meant. What guilt meant. And now they're the only things I can feel.

I am a forgiver

I forgive liars

I forgive thieves

I forgive murderers

Yet I cannot forgive myself for the horrible things I have done

Was I wrong? Am I wrong now for holding this eternal grudge against myself?

Sometimes I am. Sometimes I'm not. The point is no longer whether I'm right or wrong. The point is that I don't know.

_I don't know_

_ Did I ever know?_

The blood that's on my hands is such a strange color. I know what the color of blood is. I once worked with it, lived to keep it pumping through the veins of others. This red isn't the same color. It's a muddied red. I saved his life. I helped him live. He would be dead. His soul would have gone up to heaven—perhaps down to hell, I haven't decided—if it weren't for these hands.

I was a god for him

And now he's smeared all of the blood that should be on his hands, dripping from his tongue, onto my hands. Onto my tongue.

I am the god of a monster

* * *

There is a very strange dent in my forehead and it gives me a horrible, pestering headache. It is the kind of headache that makes you wish you were dead because it hurts so disturbingly. But it is not a pain that makes me double over and grit my teeth, pressing my fingers to my temple in a futile attempt to call peace upon myself. No. Not that type of pain. It is a pain that invades every single aspect of my life. I smile, and I am aware of the pain. I frown, and I am aware of the pain. I hold someone's hand, I am aware of the pain. I take someone's life, I am aware of the pain. And it all stems from that dent, that tiny, invisible evil right in the center of my forehead.

I point it out to others every chance I get. But I am not sure what it is and I am not sure how to describe it to them. So I say nothing. I simply point and hope that maybe they will understand more than I do. Slowly, though, as the days go by and my memories fade and I pull the trigger of the gun over and over, I am coming to understand. As a child I understood. It was much clearer then because my mind had not yet been soiled by the ideas of this dark, futureless world. There had only been clarity, and that was why as a child so far from innocence, the most terrible child there ever could be, I understood.

It is a desire for death. That is my suspicion. But I cannot confirm it yet because there is a problem with this theory, a problem with the idea that I desire death so fervently that it causes me near physical anguish.

I live.

So I continue to point at that spot on my forehead and wonder if one day, I will come to understand what it truly means to want death. I continue to live this life, even though I know there is nothing special about life. I live life. Everyone around me lives life. But death is normal, as well. If death is normal, then why live? I don't want to live, but I can't find the will to die.

Look at me! Look at me! The monster inside of me is getting bigger!

Munch munch.

Chomp chomp.

Gobble gobble.

Gulp.

* * *

I keep wondering when the chill I get each time I hold a gun will go away. If I hold one enough times, if I press my finger against the trigger, aim, shoot enough times, the chill should go away. That's what I wonder, at least. But I'm starting to believe that that's not true. I will never feel comfortable holding this gun. Or any gun. Never. So I brace myself for the feeling of utter repulsion with myself each time I reach for it. I brace myself. And I hate myself a little bit more every single time. I hate myself and I ask,

Am I right to hate myself

Am I wrong to question my hatred of myself

Should I regret saving his life

I brought a monster back to life. Let so many people crumble in his wake. And I still question whether I was right because it's a question that still doesn't have an answer. All lives are equal. Mine is equal to his. His is equal to mine. So I saved him and I let him engulf the world in his shadow. I'm not even sure if regret is the right word to use anymore. What if I hadn't saved his life? There would be a different guilt ravaging me. The guilt of letting a young boy die when I had the power to save him. I gave up that guilt for another. The guilt of letting a boy live when I had the power to let him disappear.

Nameless

Loveless

So far from innocence

I've let my hair grow out long even though I used to get it cut regularly. When I run my hand through it, it feels heavy. It's always knotted and tangled and I can actually feel the blackness of it. So different than the hair of everyone around me. And I haven't shaved in weeks. My chin scratches my fingers when I run my hands along my face. Trying to rid my brain of the images running rampant through it. When I wake up in the morning I rub my eyes until they're red because I can't get his face out. It's there smiling at me. Always there smiling.

_You resurrected me_

_ You're like a father to me_

I'm a father to no one. I resurrect no one.

No, no, no, I can't be.

I couldn't have.

No.

There is so much sorrow and darkness inside of me that I don't know if there is any light left. It used to be all I could see—that light shining up from deep within myself. It pushed me forward, made me strive for what I knew in my heart was right. That all lives are equal. That I have the power to help people. That I must do what I can, whenever I can, wherever I can. I still do. I help people in pain. I perform emergency procedures. I do what I can, whenever I can, wherever I can. When someone says, "Doctor," I respond within a moment. But after that moment, when the implications of that title sink in once more, I shrink back. I say, "I'm no doctor," but I help anyway.

Sometimes it's strange living here because nobody understands what the word Tenma means in Japanese. Perhaps if they understood they would look at me differently. They would stop calling me a savior.

It means demon

Tenma is demon

I am Tenma

Tenma, god of a monster

* * *

There is so little in this world that is beautiful, and as we stumble along through life grasping for that little, which is beautiful, we get confused. We see what is ugly. What is horrible, devastating, absolutely disgusting, and we confuse it for pure beauty because it is all we can do to be confused. And sometimes we convince ourselves that that little which is truly beautiful is ugly. I see fear in a person's eyes, I see it flash across their face in vibrant colors and see their body respond to such an animalistic emotion, and I see beauty. It is something fascinating and rare, to witness us reverting back to our true natures. Selfishness, ravenous with bloodlust, greedy, fearful and mad with the desire to instill fear. Some say it is as ugly as a monster's face.

But it is true beauty.

People misunderstand me when I tell them I kill and I execute. I shoot a gun because there is no reason for me not to. I shoot a gun because it gives me a chance to see fear in one's eyes. They think it is because I want to rebuild the world and place myself at its pedestal. They think it is because this monster inside of me craves power and craves money. Really, that the monster inside of me craves anything and everything that this world, were it mine, would have to offer. But they misunderstand. They misunderstand everything.

I kill because I kill.

And I kill to show people, to show more than anyone the one who resurrected me, the one who gave me life, that all lives are not equal. That was why he resurrected me, after all. Because I am a life, equal to that of the man standing beside me, equal to that of the man standing behind me, and equal to that of the man kneeling before me begging for mercy. That was what he believed. Yet he points a gun at my head and says, "I will kill you for killing." All lives are not equal. No lives are equal.

The only thing we are equal in is death.

That is where the end lies, and I have seen the end so many times. Over and over and over. The end, the end, the end. I lost everything that I didn't care to lose, and then I lost everything that I tried to keep. Once you let darkness overtake you, light falls behind. It can no longer reach out for your hand once you have turned your back on it. And even I didn't see the darkness still waiting ahead once I had dived, headfirst, into the abyss. I didn't realize what was still to come once I had watched chaos and fear and become addicted because that is life. Inequality. Turmoil. And then, after all is said and done, comes death, in which we all return to the soil as if there really never was a difference.

Look at me! Look at me! The monster inside of me is getting bigger!

Look at me, Doctor Tenma.

Munch munch.

Chomp chomp.

Gobble gobble.

Gulp.


End file.
